One of the perennial questions of the contemplative life is, what is it for? What possible use is it? Isn’t it merely a solipsistic, “self-actualising” activity, or some kind of relaxation technique aimed at producing a pleasant, stress-free state of mind, or even a quest for some kind of drug-free psychedelic experience?

Benignus O’Rourke writes:

The psalmist says, ‘You hide those who trust in you in the shelter of your presence.’ For ‘hide’ we might read ‘heal’. To sit with with our buried hurts and pains in the presence of the Lord is to allow ourselves to be healed by him. We no longer become involved in trying to sort them out, nor do we recoil from them. We sit quietly. We are beginning to have the confidence to outstare our ghosts.

Sometimes when people meditate or pray without words they are accused of trying to anaesthetise themselves to deaden their pain. But what we really do in our quiet prayer is to face the pain, engage with it, and transform it into energy for loving.

Benignus O’Rourke, Finding Your Hidden Treasure: The Way of Silent Prayer

and Cynthia Bourgeault tackles the problem head on from a more academic perspective:

What tends to go missing when spiritual practice is secularized… is precisely that rich and multidimensional context in which mindfulness as “present moment awareness” flows seamlessly into mindfulness as authentic spiritual remembrance. In a secular container, mindfulness tends to become privatized, appearing as a set of personal coping skills or personal wellness benefits. But in its original spiritual setting mindfulness is irreducibly relational and ethical. Its fruits are not wellness, personal longevity, or neuroplasticity. They are compassion, equanimity, and love. In contrast to the various secular and scientific models (extensively documented in this article), the spiritual model gives central place to mindfulness as “the awareness of and familiarity with an ethically oriented ultimate reality that makes human wholeness possible.” It is only against this backdrop that notions such as “remembrance” and “unity” make any sense whatsoever…

While reestablishing this wider spiritual context is certainly helpful to a fuller understanding of mindfulness practice, with Centering Prayer I believe it is essential, for apart from its kenotic grounding, the practice remains basically unintelligible. In secular mindfulness there is at least a motivational initial entry gate through which some benefit is to be accrued thereby, be it stress reduction, better attentional skills, or lower blood pressure. But kenosis and self-surrender really have no cultural starting points; apart from a direct apprehension of the great mystical traditions of imitatio and remembrance in which the practice is embedded, Centering Prayer remains stubbornly counterintuitive.

Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer

The contemplative life in its inner solitude and hiddenness – for it is hidden from our own discursive intellect within as well as it is hidden outwardly – is in some ways actually lived for others. Our inward life brings us, not always willingly, to confront aspects of being human that many would rather avoid.

Karen Karper Fredette and Paul A. Fredette once wrote,

Suffering is part of the hermit’s vocation. One of the most acute forms is to never know whether one’s chosen lifestyle is worthwhile or has any value for others. Hermits enter into the darkness, the dusky cloud of unknowing, and walk without any light beyond that which is in their own hearts. Often, unbeknownst even to themselves, they have become beacons for others.

The ghosts we outstare are not our own merely; somehow in the silence of our practice we find ourselves confronting the ghosts of those we live amongst, touching the shadows that our present age of fear and division casts across all our lives; touching, as for instance did the monks of Mount Athos during the years of the Stalin’s purges and Hitler’s atrocities, the dark skirts of chaos and cruelty that brush continually against our civilisation. Yet our inwardness does tend always to stillness, to wholeness of mind and spirit and to peace.  It is really that peace we seek for those with whom our lives are inextricably caught up, just by our being the frail, temporary human things we are.

[Parts of this piece have been rewritten from a post of the same title  on a previous blog in 2018]